


all night or a hundred years

by untilthenlive



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PLEASE look at the fanart first. It's so beautiful, it lives in my mind rent-free, kind of. ya know, not safe for newbies, sad lonely traumatized kiddos fated to meet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27729289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untilthenlive/pseuds/untilthenlive
Summary: They could never have been there for each other back then. But wouldn't it be so beautiful if, somehow, they could?WARNING: Spoilers for both characters' backstories. Descriptions of grief, death, children in very traumatizing situations - but nothing worse than canon.Based on a fanart by QuinyQuinyQ on twitter (link in notes). Title taken from "lovely" by Billie Eilish and Khalid.
Relationships: Fay D. Fluorite/Kurogane
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	all night or a hundred years

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is directly inspired by [this beautiful fanart.](https://twitter.com/quinyquinyq/status/1299699321936453637?s=21)
> 
> It lives in my mind rent-free, and I couldn't pass up writing something about it.

The wind blew cold over the empty land, hollow and numb and echoing above him. He had stopped feeling its chill long ago; so why, he wondered, was he shivering now?

He’d stopped crying hours ago, probably. There was no real sense of time anymore, hadn’t been for… well, for a long time. But the grey of the sky was still touched with a tint of light, not yet pitch-black and suffocating.

He had somehow found it in himself to at least move away from the new corpse, the sickening glint of the crown just peeking out from under a layer of fresh snow and stale blood. But he was numb in more ways than one, now, and he couldn’t figure out why he was shivering so violently.

Somewhere above him, he knew his brother sat just as alone, trapped - but in a different way. He’d stopped calling out his name hours ago, too.

He always spent his days grateful that his brother didn’t have to be the one down here, exposed to the elements, surrounded by the unending reminder of strife that they had brought to the world just by existing in it. Today was no different.

He clutched his knees to his chest, his back against the foot of the tower. His teeth chattered as he closed his eyes, burying his face in his own arms. He wondered briefly what it would feel like to bury himself in someone else’s arms - if that was something people ever did. He knew he would never know that feeling, couldn’t even begin to imagine it - would it be warm? Or would it be suffocating?

He felt a breeze from above blow at his hair, then, and the strands tickled at his bare arms.

It was another moment before his eyes shot open in his lap in realization. He felt… _something_ next to him.

Dread filled his heart again, just as it had earlier. But slowly, he turned his head anyway. He had to look up. Had to see what, or who, was here to haunt him this time - 

But nothing was there.

He froze for a moment, face still half-hidden behind his arm, before lifting his head all the way. He blinked, then blinked again.

He didn’t see anything, but he could still feel that… that _presence._ He knew something was there.

After a moment, he realized that whatever it was, it was… radiating warmth. Warmth like he’d forgotten could exist. And it felt sad, too. There was a terrible sort of grief emanating from that empty spot right next to him, a sort of paradoxical emptiness for something that shouldn’t be there but _was._ And above all else, there was a… a loneliness. One he recognized all too well.

He didn’t know how, but he knew that whatever this was - magic, or something else, it - it wasn’t malevolent. It felt like something almost familiar. It felt like something he almost dared to want to protect, to keep for himself. Like something he could curl into and let it envelop him like a blanket. Something that could comfort him, that he could help in return.

Guilt consumed him as he tried to fight against the inexplicable pull he felt towards this presence. He couldn’t take this warm feeling, this mystifying and intriguing feeling, all for himself - not when his brother sat alone with nothing up above him. But he couldn’t stop himself.

He just… he just wanted to stop the shivering.

Slowly, inch by inch, he scooted closer to the… the… he didn’t know what to call it. But as he got closer, it started to feel inexplicably… solid, almost; the closer to its center he got, the warmer it felt and the more heavy its aura was. Almost like a densely packed ball of air, an aura that had no business being in such a cold and lonely world. He scooted ever closer in, chasing that warmth, until -

He did hit something solid.

It startled him at first, and he prepared to run. But when nothing happened, he tried it again, slowly and carefully leaning against that invisible, solid _presence._ It almost felt like it was… _alive._ A spirit, perhaps?

Tentatively, not knowing its shape or form, he leaned his head in closer, before finding himself resting against that being.

Was it a being? He didn’t care - he was _warm._ Warm like he had never ever felt before, like he couldn’t have ever imagined. This was more than physical warmth, he thought. This was… something else.

He closed his eyes and breathed in, sinking into that comfortable feeling.

He wanted to pretend it was someone’s shoulder.

It almost felt like it was.

Soon, he found himself slowly drifting off into sleep. He tucked his cheek against that warmth, and let it take him. And in his last moments of consciousness, he could swear he felt someone taking his hand where it rested on the ground beside him.

He wasn’t shivering anymore.

* * *

The rattling of wheels, the rhythmic clop of a horse’s hooves, gently woke him from his slumber. His eyes fluttered halfway open in exhaustion, and he felt a terrible, aching pain deep in his heart. Then he felt it in his hand.

He looked down at that, first, just to see it wrapped hastily in bandages and resting on the seat beside him. He looked up, the view before his eyes in his half-asleep state confirming what the jostling had already told him - he was in a carriage.

He didn’t know where he was being taken, but he didn’t have the energy to fight it anymore. That girl, from earlier - she’d seemed okay. At the very least, he could escape later if he needed to, could fight and find some way out. But right now, he was tired. He was _so_ _tired._

He barely had any idea what had happened. One moment he’d been clutching onto his mother - or… her _body,_ he thought with a nauseating feeling in his stomach - and the image of his father’s sword had burned itself, stinging like a brand, into his vision. The next, he’d found himself pinned to that pillar, that strange but kind girl in front of him, every muscle in his body aching, tears streaming down his cheeks, before slowly losing the battle of consciousness.

Now, he felt the cool night air stinging against those same tear stains that still marked his cheeks. He looked out the window of the carriage to see the crescent moon sitting high in the sky. 

He wanted to cry again.

His eyes fell closed of their own accord, too heavy for him to keep them open any longer. He felt a breeze blow gently in through the window and shivered.

He felt himself drifting off to sleep, and -

Then he felt something.

An inexplicable aura radiating from the seat next to him. His eyes shot open, and he looked over, and he saw… nothing.

A chill washed over him and suddenly, the carriage felt _cold._ Colder than he had ever felt before, even in all those snowy winters of years past. He felt that presence lingering there, and he felt himself drawing away. Was it a ghost?

No… no, it wasn’t a ghost. It wasn’t a demon, either. He couldn’t explain how he knew, but somehow he could tell, this… thing, this feeling, whatever it was… it was alive.

And it was so, so unbelievably lonely.

He blinked, to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. But he could still feel that cold, sad aura, almost as if it were… reaching out to him. He almost felt as if it were trying to comfort _him._

He took one moment to feel that loneliness, that utter desperation radiating from that spot, and instantly knew that he wanted to protect it. Wanted it to know it wasn’t the only one suffering, that it wasn’t alone. He shifted over to lean into that cold spot, and shivered when he met something solid.

Whatever it was, it was smaller than him, and as he slowly leaned in, it almost seemed like it was shivering. He laid his head against it, then, and felt an overwhelming feeling that he couldn’t place. It was something like peace, but not quite - it felt like familiarity, like solidarity. Like he and this - being, spirit, whatever it was - somehow understood each other, even though everything about this made no sense at all.

Still, it was not long before he began to drift back into sleep again. He was colder now, but he felt so calm, in a strange way. He felt like maybe, by sharing a space with this… thing - maybe he was helping it feel a little warmer.

And he was still so exhausted.

So he let it lull him back into a sleep that was dreamless, but deep.

But just before he drifted off, he almost thought he felt something grab his hand. He squeezed back, and drifted off... and didn’t wake again until much later.

* * *

When he awoke, it was to that same sound of the wind echoing above him, lying alone against the cold, hard, snowy ground.

* * *

When he awoke, his eyes shot open to the view of an unfamiliar room, and the voice of an unfamiliar princess.

* * *

He would search his lonely prison for that strange presence every day for a week after that, but would never find it. He wondered if it was him who drove it away. Eventually he would forget about it, chalking it up to a desperate illusion of a sad and lonely child before letting it fade from his memory altogether.

* * *

He would think it was a dream, a vision conjured up by a grieving and tired boy, something his brain invented to explain a sudden loneliness he’d never had to feel before, something to explain a sudden chilly breeze in the seemingly endless night. Taken by training and learning his role in a new place, too busy to think about a silly dream, he would forget about it entirely in the next few days.

* * *

They would go on, pawns in a game they had no part in, living their lives and playing their roles. Finding ways to survive.

* * *

But then, one night, when they hold each other for the first time, for real - 

\- one injured, one healing; both relieved and ready and finally understanding -

When they finally, _finally_ fall into each other’s arms, it feels so...

Familiar _._


End file.
